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:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Civil war - Knowledge

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the rebel leader was left-handed" rather than coordinating a shared definition like us poor Knowledge editors. The end of the Cold War situation is quite humorous in that it is quite clear from recent scholarship that the Cold War resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of civil wars over the next decade or so. Nevertheless, many war scholars at the end of the Cold War, who apparently had been entirely focused on superpower conflict and now needed to find something else to do to earn a salary, had missed the steady buildup of ongoing civil wars over the previous decades and published widely disseminated and quoted works concluding that the end of the Cold War had caused the abnormally large number of observed civil wars. The more difficult argument is the one that Hironaka suggest by measuring explicit correlation between superpower/communist involvement and increased length. I'll see what I can dig up and add. -
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scholarly work took the shape of a study of a particular civil war and all of its peculiarities that made it different from every other war. The major problem with the sort of statistical studies that these "ecology" studies rely on is the lack of data once you get back into even the beginning of the 20th century, e.g. demographics from census takers of the size of ethnic minority groups, accurate measures of miles of railroad track per capita (used as a proxy for government strength), etc. Several of the measures that Hironaka used for post-WWII wars simply aren't available for the earlier wars she discusses, and are omitted. Nevertheless, I'm sure someone has taken a stab at it and I'll see what I can find. -
109:", which is generally how the two broad schools of civil war scholarship divide. The Collier-Hoeffler model, considered a massive assault by the "greed" school, has certainly been the focus of much of the debate, with many of the "grievance" folks reduced to the rearguard action of insisting that identity issues form the basis of civil wars but are too complicated to be measured by statistics. (I've actually read wider than the sources I used, but found these to have the most explanatory power, so I guess the minor role grievance explanation play in this article is my POV.) - 470:
would sign on, and Hironaka spends a long time pointing out that the whole idea that all of the ex-colonial states are the same structurally as the older states is absurd. That said, even in a collapsed state like Somalia, there are still centers of power that claim that they are legitimate. (Tangentially, one could imagine that the 'autonomous regions' described in
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I notice more recent editors tends to share this view. I see redlinks as invitations, and an article without redlinks to be rather melancholic, as there's no avenue for sudden expansion into new related topics. I have and continue to strongly defend that redlink, in the expectation that either I or
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All good points. I will try to cast my net wider. There actually doesn't appear to be a lot of disagreement on a the number cutoff, probably because scholars can simply preface their work with "I'm using the 1000 casualties total criterion" or "I'm only counting 100 casualty per year conflicts where
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That's actually one of the few sections that largely survived after I got my grubby paws on the article. There were no academic definitions previously. I've put the academics first, cut down the other definitions and put them under "further definitions". On a second look, I couldn't figure out why
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Otherwise, the article is generally well-written and clear. The statistics are incorporated in a pretty readable way. I think you might go into too much detail at some points, but that's the kind of thing that comes from researching a wider variety of sources. They'll quickly show you what the major
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25 out of the 41 inline citations refer to Hironoka, and another 9 point towards Collier, Hoeffler and Sambanis, while one inline citation points to both of them, bringing the total to 35/41 inline citations being attributed to two sources. However, in your bibliography, there are far more sources,
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I have been expanding this article, off and on, for the past couple months using books on my shelf and no longer have any bright ideas on what to add. Given the extremely general nature of the topic, I have relied heavily on statistical studies, which are not usually considered gripping reading. I
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on Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts mentions "the territory of a High Contracting Party between its armed forces", while Hironaka's definition, which I've used in the lede, requires the state as a belligerent. However, the Geneva Conventions were written for states that
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I started working on the article, though there's little evidence that the sources listed were actually used in the article. I have a feeling someone just copied a bibliography from somewhere. One of the recurring critiques I'm hearing is about the lack of diversity in sources and I'll certainly
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Kudos for taking on a difficult but important topic. I encounter a lot of similar challenges when I try to do the same thing with abstract topics in video games. (Much easier to focus on a specific civil war, isn't it?) So when I put out these comments, I just want to let you know that I'm really
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No, the Collier-Hoeffler model changed the way people approached the subject because nobody seems to have done a massive statistical study to examine the causes of civil wars before. As such, there are many many scholars who have built on the C-H framework to refine or modify its conclusions.
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Even the other sections, for such an important topic, you could draw on a wider number of sources. I'm almost 100% sure that academics debate what is or isn't a civil war, and I'd really like to know where the debate usually ends up. I imagine there's less room for POV in merely summarizing the
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In the "causes" section, you put a LOT of weight onto Collier, Hoeffler and Sambanis. Even if they're pretty reliable themselves, I don't think this will be enough to provide a comprehensive look at the causes. You could really use a wider number of sources to either confirm or criticize these
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Yeah, the argument over if pre-nationalism states can be credibly compared with modern states been a major problem in political science, not just with this field of study. Also academics have only recently begun looking at the "ecology" of civil wars and how they are similar; previously most
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would appreciate, in particular, constructive criticism on if I've managed to discuss the statistics in a readable way and suggestions on what else people want to know about this type of war, though people are of course free to comment on anything they wish. Thanks,
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In the definition section you jump right into what the Geneva Conventions say. There's no context. The academic definitions should probably come first. And you'll probably need a suitable heading for the other definitions: (policy definitions? legal definitions?)
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timing of several civil wars. But even here, there's some potentially controversial ideas when it comes to correlating civil wars with the cold war -- and it might help to have other sources confirm or elaborate on these ideas.
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I might like to know more about civil wars before the 19th century. (Or, if these wars weren't generally called civil wars, it would be important to clarify why. I'm not a historian, but if they generally don't classify the
478:, whose definition I use to lead off the definition section, doesn't mention a state at all, which may be more intuitive for people, as several people have tried to change the lead to make it more general. 105:
That's very true. Hopefully I, or someone else, will get around to the one redlink I insist on keeping in the article (despite attempts to at least one editor to 'fix' the redlink by delinking it), "
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Thank you for your comments. It'll take me a while to work on your suggestions but I hope you'll have a chance to go back over the article when I feel it's ready for another round of review. -
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I wouldn't say "take on" so much as "sleepwalk into", but thanks for the comments. And yes, it's far far easier to write about a specific actual conflict than about a class of conflict. -
205:, but before I ended up there I used to poke in and around some historical and political articles. Feel free to seek me out directly whenever you're ready for the next round of review. 450:
is both fundamentally different from and worse than other types of conflict, have been busy trying to blow holes in the C-H model or find proxy measures that would prove their point
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Wait, I thought the whole point of Knowledge was to provide a forum for people to complain about every possible topic. Oh yeah, and also something to do with an encyclopedia.  ;) -
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All the pictures line up on the right-hand of the page, making it seem visually unbalanced. Some of them could probably be moved to the left hand side without a problem.
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the article needed an indepth discussion of things that were not but are related to civil war, and might just end up cutting that entire "further" section later. -
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But of course, why else do we so many articles with criticism sections? And all those edit wars, and talk pages to argue on. In fact, one of our core policies,
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would have been relatively quickly seen as legitimate states in an international system like that of 18th century Europe.)
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That would explain it. It would be unusual for someone to leave the task half-done, with all of those sources available. --
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Alternately, those who hold that grievance better explains the cause of civil wars, in particular those who hold that
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Okay, seems reasonable. It just really stands out. But hey, if that results in a new article, everyone wins. --
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viewpoints. Your goal should be to get away from attribution to any one single source, and instead achieve a
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as well. In any case, this points to the need for more sources so readers can see the back and forth.
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That's all I have to say for now. It's a better article than I expected from so complex a topic. --
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Alright, this is my first peer review, so don't complain about it. :p A couple of points
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link in the introduction really stands out. Perhaps it'll be better to just remove it?
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Is there only the Collier-Hoeffler model and must one party be always the state?
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sympathetic to how difficult it is to research an article like this.
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the C-H framework. While I've been expecting a need for
308:I'll experiment and see how it looks staggered. - 472:Consolidation of states within Somalia (1998–2006) 147:as such, then it might be because of the lack of 408:No problem, it was my pleasure. Thanks for not 274:someone else take up the invitation. - 14: 18:Knowledge:WikiProject Military history 343:Actually, the bibliography was added 102:from no perspective in particular. 27: 340:so this shouldn't be hard to fix. 28: 502: 396:Thank you for your comments. - 201:Sounds good. I mostly stick to 174:Research, research, research. 13: 1: 441:09:59, 31 December 2008 (UTC) 423:03:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC) 404:23:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 391:23:09, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 371:03:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC) 356:23:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 331:03:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC) 316:23:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 297:03:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC) 282:23:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 258:03:18, 30 December 2008 (UTC) 239:23:56, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 215:15:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 197:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 184:04:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 163:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 136:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 117:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 91:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 70:09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 46:02:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC) 7: 489:02:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC) 458:, it may be worth creating 10: 507: 481:Thanks for the comment. - 245:Knowledge:Ignore all rules 348:make that a priority. - 465:The Geneva Convention 460:Collier-Hoeffler Model 456:greed versus grievance 268:greed versus grievance 107:greed versus grievance 498: 145:Roman civil wars 506: 505: 501: 500: 499: 497: 496: 495: 448:ethnic conflict 421: 389: 369: 329: 295: 256: 225: 53: 35: 26: 25: 24: 12: 11: 5: 504: 494: 493: 492: 491: 479: 463: 433:Wandalstouring 428: 427: 426: 425: 417: 385: 378: 377: 376: 375: 374: 373: 365: 337: 336: 335: 334: 333: 325: 303: 302: 301: 300: 299: 291: 263: 262: 261: 260: 252: 224: 221: 220: 219: 218: 217: 168: 167: 166: 165: 140: 139: 138: 121: 120: 119: 95: 94: 93: 75: 74: 73: 72: 52: 49: 34: 29: 15: 9: 6: 4: 3: 2: 503: 490: 487: 484: 480: 477: 473: 468: 464: 461: 457: 453: 449: 444: 443: 442: 438: 434: 430: 429: 424: 420: 419:contributions 415: 411: 407: 406: 405: 402: 399: 395: 394: 393: 392: 388: 387:contributions 383: 372: 368: 367:contributions 363: 359: 358: 357: 354: 351: 346: 342: 341: 338: 332: 328: 327:contributions 323: 319: 318: 317: 314: 311: 307: 306: 304: 298: 294: 293:contributions 289: 285: 284: 283: 280: 277: 272: 271: 269: 265: 264: 259: 255: 254:contributions 250: 246: 242: 241: 240: 237: 234: 230: 229: 228: 216: 212: 208: 204: 200: 199: 198: 195: 192: 188: 187: 186: 185: 181: 177: 172: 171:points are. 164: 161: 158: 153: 152: 150: 146: 141: 137: 134: 131: 126: 125: 122: 118: 115: 112: 108: 104: 103: 101: 96: 92: 89: 86: 81: 80: 77: 76: 71: 68: 65: 61: 60: 59: 58: 57: 48: 47: 44: 41: 33: 23: 19: 476:James Fearon 451: 414:Patar knight 382:Patar knight 379: 362:Patar knight 322:Patar knight 288:Patar knight 249:Patar knight 226: 223:Patar knight 173: 169: 54: 36: 467:Protocol II 149:Nationalism 22:Peer review 207:Randomran 176:Randomran 51:Randomran 32:Civil war 320:'Kay. -- 20:‎ | 452:through 100:WP:NPOV 483:Banyan 410:biting 398:Banyan 350:Banyan 345:before 310:Banyan 276:Banyan 233:Banyan 191:Banyan 157:Banyan 130:Banyan 111:Banyan 85:Banyan 64:Banyan 40:Banyan 203:WP:VG 16:< 486:Tree 437:talk 412:. -- 401:Tree 353:Tree 313:Tree 279:Tree 266:The 236:Tree 211:talk 194:Tree 180:talk 160:Tree 133:Tree 114:Tree 88:Tree 67:Tree 43:Tree 416:- / 384:- / 364:- / 324:- / 290:- / 251:- / 151:.) 439:) 213:) 182:) 435:( 209:( 178:(

Index

Knowledge:WikiProject Military history
Peer review
Civil war
Banyan
Tree
02:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Banyan
Tree
09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Banyan
Tree
09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
WP:NPOV
greed versus grievance
Banyan
Tree
09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Banyan
Tree
09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Roman civil wars
Nationalism
Banyan
Tree
09:30, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Randomran
talk
04:19, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
Banyan
Tree

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